New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero's origins, exploring Bernie Gunther's first weeks on Berlin's Murder Squad.
The author’s singular gifts for conveying the verbal, physical and moral textures of this vanished world are undiminished in Metropolis. The book offers similes worthy of Raymond Chandler. The cosmic ambivalence evoked by Philip Kerr can best be summed up in Gunther’s musing: 'Really there was just light and darkness and some life in between, and you made of it what you could.'
Metropolis is Kerr’s and Bernie’s swan song—a brilliant Berlin opera of Gothhe proportion with an intricate and riveting plot. And just like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Philip Kerr’s Metropolis is a masterpiece.
... Kerr displays again his special talent for reflecting individual depravities against the broad canvas of a society collapsing upon itself. It’s fascinating to see a younger Bernie here, with the makings of the melancholic wiseass and world-class cynic he will soon become, but still just a tad vulnerable (and still learning to hold his liquor). The Bernie Gunther series is one of the great triumphs of modern noir, and it will be sorely missed.
